UNIVERSITY EXTENSION
This is one of the areas the university has committed itself to strengthening and to relate more tightly with teaching and research. Following are just a few relevant experiences in this area.
The Integrated Programs deal with solutions to emerging problems through interdisciplinary work, the articulation of the three main functions of the university and in cooperation with different social actors. The APEX-Cerro Program represents a rich experience in this sense. Students and faculty from a dozen of schools work with the community in a neighborhood of Montevideo. The social reality became an object of study and an educational space and at the same time the cooperation between community and university permits to solve some social problems. In the second semester of this year we will inaugurate the Metropolitan Integration Program, which will work in Communal Centers in Zones 6 and 9 of Montevideo; an initial emphasis will be on community health and well-being, science and culture, and rural development.
This university area emphasizes what has been done to help in national emergencies, such as when we suspected an epidemic of Dengue Fever and during the floods that devastated the departments of Soriano, Durazno, and Treinta y Tres at the beginning of 2007. In the first instance, the University collected and systematized all the information available at the epidemiological, viral, entomological and serological levels, as well as drawing on community experiences in prevention and monitoring. All this information was given to the National Emergency System, the Public Health Ministry, and the municipal governing bodies. With the floods, we helped with diagnosis and reconstruction; the schools of Architecture, Psychology, Medicine, Economics, Social Sciences, Law and Nursing were especially active.
It must be noted also the university’s commitment to the development of previously abandoned areas of national life, such as rural poverty; this is handled through an agreement with the Rural Uruguay program at the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fishing. In a similar vein, we are establishing agreements with the Ministry of Social Development and the Youth Institute. This year we began the Incubator of Associative Cooperatives and Popular Initiatives.
